PRIMO CARNERA’S CONTESTS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18546, 17 April 1930, Page 9

PRIMO CARNERA’S CONTESTS.

Allegations Of Faking. INVESTIGATION IN CALIFORNIA. (United Press Association—tJy Electrlo Telegraph—Copyright.) (Received April 16. 9.40 p.m.) NEW YORK, Ajril 16. A message from Oakland (California) reports that the State Boxing Commission, which withheld Primo Camera’s 10,000 dollar purse, has begun an investigation into the reports that the Italian’s fight with the negro, Leon Chevalier, on April 14 was “faked.” The negro, who weighed 2161 b, and made an impressive showing for six rounds, dropped for the count of nine. He then arose, but one of his seconds tossed in the towel, whereupon Camera was awarded a technical knock-out, which action is illegal in California. Unless the chief second halts the fight it is not stopped. Leon Chevalier’s wife allegedly peisuaded the negro to admit that he had been approached with a promise that the purse “would, be more than 900 dollars” if he consented to follow these questionable arrangements.

[Referring to the Italian giant’s arrival in the United States. W. Blitho, writing in ‘The New York World” said: “The coming of Primo Camera is a major event to I do not care to guess how many millions of men of ah nationalities to-day. Detroit, or behind the Chicago stockyards, in the ruined collier villages of the north of England, on the quay-sides of Venice, New York, and for all I know, Shanghai, they are discussing. it over their lunch-pails at this very moment. “Sport is the chief share they have to-day in the drama of life. Even ii» France and Spain it has superseded politics at as the predominant masculine interest. Politicians are in despair about it. And boxing is the innermost shrine of the cult—alas, too often empty. For your great prize-fignter must not only have the strength, the skill, the courage. He has to have a specially dramatic or heroic personality, which experience has demonstrated is almost as rare as a poet, mucii less common than great captains of industry or statesmen. The demigods of the ring have to have as many points, as seldom found together, as an avatar of Vishnu. We have to wait till nature is in a mood for artistic pioduction.

“The heavyweight contender —that is the most convenient rame for them must be an embodiment of the s*large and unusual, yet elemental, qualities, so that grown men of imagination may adopt him, and play with him. He must be material for folk-:ore, like Dempsey, Carpentier, Tunney, Johnson, Jeffries —a gorilla-man, or a dude, or a terror, or a romance. Just a firstclass pugilist is not muph use to the faithful. “They have a curious and naive technique. Sometimes, rarely, they emphasise a heroic quality. That worked well with Tunney. Better and easier, they exaggerate the monstrous they find in him. They make a tiger i ut of the amiable Dempsey, a stranger cut of another, a black terror out cf !he blithe and Irresponsible Jack Ju/mson. Sometimes the picture of a lot re coward will do for these bards; anything that flares up emotions of Late, admiration, or wonder. So Camera Las to be at all costs the giant.”]